Was there a good point in the sermon you heard for your Mass of obligation for Sunday?
Let us know what it was!
Fr. Z’s Podcasts RSS Feed
About this blog…
“This blog is like a fusion of the Baroque ‘salon’ with its well-tuned harpsichord around which polite society gathered for entertainment and edification and, on the other hand, a Wild West “saloon” with its out-of-tune piano and swinging doors, where everyone has a gun and something to say. Nevertheless, we try to point our discussions back to what it is to be Catholic in this increasingly difficult age, to love God, and how to get to heaven.” – Fr. Z
Coat of Arms by D Burkart
YOUR RECENT COMMENTS
- on Daily Rome Shot 1221 – mistreated: “Black to move and mate in 3. [NB: I’ll hold comments with solutions ’till the next day so there won’t…”
- on Your Sunday Sermon Notes – Holy Family (N.O. Baptism of the Lord) 2025: “first and foremost, your observation about the young Lord at the Temple is priceless. attendance at the Cathedral’s 1230 today…”
- on Your Sunday Sermon Notes – Holy Family (N.O. Baptism of the Lord) 2025: “When we don’t live up to our baptismal mission we put our salvation at risk.”
- on Daily Rome Shot 1220: “Black to move and mate in 5. 1. … Qh4 2. g3 Ng5+ 3. Kg2 (if Bxg5 then 4. Qe4#)…”
- on Daily Rome Shot 1218 – I’m confused.: ““The objective of the formation of the candidate for the priesthood in the affective-sexual sphere is the ability to accept…”
- on YOUR URGENT PRAYER REQUESTS: “Asking prayers for friends with young child who has cancer. They have been pursuing prayer all the way along, along…”
- on Daily Rome Shot 1217 – “Why”, you may be asking? Wherein Fr. Z rants.: “Archdiocese of the Five Boroughs? Archdiocese of Three Boroughs and a couple of counties heading north, maybe… it being a…”
- on Daily Rome Shot 1217 – “Why”, you may be asking? Wherein Fr. Z rants.: “Some Orthodox and Greek Catholics process on their knees”
- on Daily Rome Shot 1219 – on the other hand…: “This calls for the ultimate sacrifice: 1. Qxc2+! RxQ 2. Nxd3+ Kb1 (or a1) 3. Re1+ Rc1 4. RxR mate”
- on Young men are converting to serious, “muscular” Christianity.: “Apologies for coming late to this conversation. I would like to add that most women of a traditional leaning dislike…”
- on Daily Rome Shot 1219 – on the other hand…: “Black to move and mate in 4. [NB: I’ll hold comments with solutions ’till the next day so there won’t…”
- on From “The Private Diary of Bishop F. Atticus McButterpants” – 03-01-25 – Chewrows: “Don’t worry, as we have seen in NO parishes that pray the TLM, people will kneel and take the Host…”
- on Daily Rome Shot 1218 – I’m confused.: “That’s a kind of confusion I could live with. Getting a cone of pistacchio and stracciatella at a good Italian…”
ABORTION PILL RESCUE NETWORK
Everyone, work to get this into your parish bulletins and diocesan papers.
Federated Computer… your safe and private alternative to big biz corporations that hate us while taking our money and mining our data. Have an online presence large or small? Catholic DIOCESE? Cottage industry? See what Federated has to offer. Save money and gain peace of mind.
I am an affiliate. Click and join or at least explore! If you join, I’ll get credit.
Polls
Loading ...Donate using VENMO
GREAT BEER from Traditional Benedictine Monks in Italy
CLICK and say your daily offerings!
A Daily Prayer for Priests
NEW OPPORTUNITY – 10% off with code: FATHERZ10
Fr. Z’s VOICEMAIL
Nota bene: I do not answer these numbers or this Skype address. You won't get me "live". I check for messages regularly.
WDTPRS
020 8133 4535
651-447-6265
Good coffee and tea. Help monks.
I use this when I travel both in these USA and abroad. Very useful. Fast enough for Zoom. I connect my DMR (ham radio) through it. If you use my link, they give me more data. A GREAT back up.
Help support Fr. Z’s Gospel of Life work at no cost to you. Do you need a Real Estate Agent? Calling these people is the FIRST thing you should do!
They find you a pro-life agent in your area who commits to giving a portion of the fee to a pro-life group!
This blog has to earn its keep!
PLEASE subscribe via PayPal if it is useful. Zelle and Wise are better, but PayPal is convenient.
A monthly subscription donation means I have steady income I can plan on. I put you my list of benefactors for whom I pray and for whom I often say Holy Mass.
In view of the rapidly changing challenges I now face, I would like to add more $10/month subscribers. Will you please help?
For a one time donation...
To donate monthly I prefer Zelle because it doesn't extract fees. Use
frz AT wdtprs DOT comPLEASE RESPOND. Pretty pleeeease?
Loading ...WDTPRS POLL
Loading ...Great WINE USE COUPON CODE: fatherz10
Use my code for a discount
Loading ...
Our visiting priest, formerly assigned to our parish, chose to lecture us on the evils of the “market economy”, somehow tying that in to the multiplication of the loaves. I was waiting for him to say that it was the people present who performed the miracle by their sharing of what they had brought with them. But while that seemed to be implied, he never quite made it explicit.
He also said we are supposed to “receive” something, grace maybe? that will transform us. Never made clear what that was, or how we are to receive it.
Mercifully short, though. And his extravagant hand gestures and vocal inflections were a little more restrained than usual. But the trendy sung “Gloria” was something I just had to suffer through and offer up.
Some top shelf observations from a monsignor who will be a new semi-regular at the parish.
In the Gospel according to St. John, every detail is meaningful. The reference to Passover isn’t simply saying something happened in the springtime, but it calls to mind how God delivered the children of Israel and provided Manna for them. Passover was a sacrifice of a lamb which gained forgiveness: it was a foreshadowing of the Eucharist. The reference to the mountain isn’t merely a scenic touch, but it calls to mind other great mountains: Sinai where God gave the covenant, Carmel where Elijah defeated the prophets of Baal, Zion where the temple was built, the Mount of the beatitudes and even Calvary itself.
When the Lord feeds this crowd, it isn’t merely addressing physical hunger. The Bread of Life discourse, which continues for the next few weeks, is the foundation of Eucharistic theology.
Faith comes through hearing. The city of Jerusalem heard, saw, and refused the Word of righteousness and was destroyed. If we keep the Word, the Word will keep us.
Let us pray for the grace to persevere until the visitation comes.
The priest on Sunday spoke about generosity and how God can use whatever we give in love. He then spoke about the needs of the church and how many minisites need our time and talent as well as money.
Fr. John Hardon’s quote: “Nothing Blinds the intellect like sexual mortal sin”.
At the local EF, Fr. Sirico exhorted us to develop a life of prayer, go to confession, and hope in God, who will not tempt us more than we can bear.
I went to a church in Northern New Jersey yesterday. Sermon was given in Polish with English translation. Father related breakfast (it was 7 AM) to our physical hunger to our spiritual hunger to the Eucharist to their new perpetual adoration chapel. Good stuff.
There was so much to take away from our priest’s homily yesterday – so much!
First he addressed the naysayers who question whether Jesus actually performed miracles and/or said what He is quoted as saying. I almost felt like he was reading “FishWrap” :-) He used this Gospel in particular, mentioning that this miracle is mentioned in each of the Gospels….oh! so much to process about what he said……
But the phrase that I took away – as did those with whom I had breakfast following Mass – was simple and to the point: “Jesus simply said “Give me what you have…..and I will give you what you need,”‘ and then Fr. R continued to speak of trust and prayer. Wow.
Fr Z
Our Parish celebrated Her Patronal saints’ day St Joachim and St. Ann. Besides that magnificent description by Charlemagne of the Tomb of St Ann in Apt and the great shrine that grew from it., Our parish priests homily explained what I have not heard for “ages unto ages” as a Byzantine would say, he explained we live, “Love is Patient etc.” in First Corinthian,s with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. In the letters before Vatican 2, the word used in the Douai versions of the letter was not Love but Charity the supernatural virtue, a stronger form of that emotion than Love. We were taught this opinion of Paul’s was the love comprising god and our neighbour. It was not sentimental but a true deep contemplation of the value of God in our lives and Him in Himself. The Love described in the Beatific Vision that proceeds from the Father to the Son and the Son reflected back to the Father. That Love the Holy Ghost, the Divine Eternal Spirit of Supernatural Love and Sanctifying Grace, which in the reality of the Catholic Faith and the teachings on grace and faith by Augustine and Suarez is the only way by which we possess Christ in Us and thus the Father and the Holy Ghost, the Love that cannot be seen.
At least it was until the sixties.
Fr’s main point (at least as far as there was one – slightly rambli this week I felt but all in a pretty orthodox and straight down the line way, maybe more scattergun than rambling) was actually primarily from the second reading (or epistle if your prefer) which in and of itself was a treat. It was more or less “what are you doing in your own life to work for the unity of the Church and the spreading of the Gospel, never mind thinking what you would do if you were Father etc.”
He managed to imply that anyone who says Jesus did not really miraculously multiply the loaves and fish is talking rubbish and in fact is contradicting the message of the Gospel. So that should put the parish priest from the neighbouring parish in his place. In and of itself it was a delight to hear this.
Our Rector at the Cathedral began a 5 week series on the Eucharist (he will be giving the homilies at all the Masses). He began by explaining the meaning of the liturgy beginning with the procession up to the liturgy of the Word. He is trying to catechize those who missed it over the past 45 years. It was wonderful. Attendance at the Masses, both daily and the weekend, is increasing. This past Saturday the lines for Confession were amazing. Backup had to be called in!
Peace and God bless.
We make a lot of fantastic claims–that a virgin gave birth, that God is one but also three, that Jesus is God Na man, that the bread and wine become Christ, etc–but do we really believe? It is hard to our minds that are trained in skepticism and the scientific age.
Father recommend we pray “Lord I believe, help my unbelief”.
We have a transitional deacon with us for a few weeks before he returns to Mundelein seminary. I don’t remember the finer points, but he said something similar to what one of the above posters noted about how none of the details in John’s gospel are insignificant, and carried that point in several directions, including some on how we know the multiplication of the loaves was not sharing or some other natural explanation, but a genuine miracle.
He also talked a little bit about prefiguring the Eucharist. He closed by reminding us that the readings for the next several weeks are all closely related and we should try to pay attention to each and remember the others as we see how John 6 plays out.
He also said the feeding of the multitude was written about six times between the four Gospels, with some differences in the details, but that the major details were consistent. Is that correct?
Maybe I misread, but I’ve thought for years that the additional mentions of feeding a multitude were a separate instance of Jesus doing so.
Unrelated question – going back over the readings now, I noticed the USCCB website does not capitalize pronouns referring to God: “Jesus went across the Sea of Galilee. A large crowd followed him.” Many other Catholic publications do the same these days.
Since the practice was formerly so well established, I assume this was a deliberate decision. If it was deliberate, there was a reason for it. What was the reason?
We can be like Philip, paralyzed by the magnitude of the task we have been given and only able to say how impossible it is. Or we can be like Andrew, and present the Lord with whatever we have to work with, even if it’s just some humble peasant food, and let Him work miracles with it.